Steam & Excursion > Even The Roundhouse Power At Bieber Was Big!

During the age of steam the yard switchers used by most mainline railroads consisted of 0-6-0 power and often not even large 0-6-0's. That was not the case for the Great Northern in many of their yards and certainly not at their yard in Bieber, California.

Wil Whittaker found this brute parked next to the GN enginehouse at Bieber in May, 1941. If GN #886 looks big enough to be a 2-8-0 that is because she was turned out by the Brooks Locomotive Works in 1903 as just that, a Consolidation. Originally built in 1903 as one of the GN's F-9 Class 2-8-0's she was converted (or "untrucked") in 1918 into one of the C-3 Class 0-8-0's that you see here. With her 55" drivers she delivered 57,350#s of tractive effort which proved very valuable when switching the long lines of cars in the joint GN/WP yard at Bieber.

I bet no one ever referred to this beast as "the little switch engine".


Martin

The second shot was taken the same day by Guy L. Dunscomb and shows the layout of the GN Bieber engine faclities.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/15 07:57 by LoggerHogger.

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Interesting, haven't seen photos of the roundhouse or other facilities at Bieber. There's not a lot of clues out there either.

Some of my 1980-ish photos indicate a small kraft paper mill or wood chip 'digester' in the area across from the depot. Lots of something went on out there, but not anymore.

Looks like someone already got the builder's plate. Might be in a collection somewhere ?

TCnR Wrote:

> Interesting, haven't seen photos of the roundhouse
> or other facilities at Bieber. There's not a lot
> of clues out there either.

See:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3446873
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2776716

LoggerHogger wrote:

> I bet no one ever referred to this beast as "the little switch engine".

Maybe...but on the other hand, at Bieber it would have been rubbing shoulders with Western Pacific's 2-6-6-2 "Baby Mallets."

Was there a turntable there? Can't see one. Maybe a wye?

ddg Wrote:
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> Looks like someone already got the builder's
> plate. Might be in a collection somewhere ?


I thought that the GN built most of their own locomotives, thus there may not have been a "builder's plate" as we are accustomed to.

Jack,

Actually GN only built a relatively small number of their own engines. This one was an ALCO product from the Brooks Works. These plates were often disposed of when the engine recieved it's first new firebox.

Martin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/15 10:03 by LoggerHogger.

Will someone describe the valve gear on this loc?
Also is in a flat valve or a piston valve?

Peter

It appears to have Stephenson gear with inboard piston valves.

Posted from iPhone

That tank car to the right... is it a canteen water car with an back-up headlight?
Dave in Missoula

Oh yes. There's some info on later developments related to the turntable and roundhouse in this one.

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> TCnR Wrote:
>
> > Interesting, haven't seen photos of the
> roundhouse
> > or other facilities at Bieber. There's not a
> lot
> > of clues out there either.
>
> See:
> ----
> http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,
> 2776716
>

First time I was ever in Bieber was spring of 1969 and there wasn't much there, and the depot deserted. Hard to imagine that there used to be an entire engine facility there, something I was unaware of until this post. (Thanks, Martin!) I wonder: at its peak, how many employees did GN have working there? And where did they live?

Lee Hower - Sacramento

Posted from Android

Don't know where anybody lived back in the day. I did notice of grid of streets with a couple of houses, nothing obvious. There was also a comment on the referenced thread.

mcfflyer Wrote:
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> First time I was ever in Bieber was spring of 1969
> and there wasn't much there, and the depot
> deserted. Hard to imagine that there used to be an
> entire engine facility there, >
> Lee Hower - Sacramento

I had the same impression when I visited in the early 80's. What I'm really surprised about is that they did enough switching there to have an assigned switcher. I thought Bieber was where they just swapped power but kept the train together - except for switching the local industry. I thought they would just use road power for that.

The Bieber Plat map dated 1943 shows a wye. Plat map can be found at gn-npjointarchive.org